The invention relates to a process and apparatus for the manufacture of filled, closed containers made of a foldable material and having a tubular wall section of any cross-section, a bottom and a lid, the material for the wall section, the bottom and the lid being fed in separately and the container being filled and closed with the lid after fixing the bottom in place.
A particular, but in no way exclusive area of application of the invention is the manufacture of milk cartons which are assembled, filled and closed on the apparatus itself under hygienic conditions.
Prior art processes and machines hitherto used for manufacturing tubular cardboard or plastic containers and still in use today have several stations arranged in cadence to form a production line to which the container blanks are fed at intervals by a transport system. Owing to the large number of stations, these known machines are very long and occupy a relatively large space. Since the joints in the material are mostly made by welding (heat-sealing), each welding station must be followed by a cooling leg. This considerably increases the total length of the machine. In addition, these machines working in a production line do not allow continuous manufacture and the moving parts of the machinery cannot be sealed off from the zone in which the containers are formed and filled, although this is desirable for reasons of hygiene. However, depending on the contents of the containers, it can be of the utmost importance that the sterilized contents do not come into contact with machine oil or dust particles and also that the moving parts of the machinery are protected from the container contents which may at times spray in all directions.